Chapter 16: We Charge More for Those

Chapter 16

We Charge More for Those

“Can I use your phone?”

Drew glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, his mouth quirking up in a smile that read more sad than amused. “If I snap, nine-one-one isn’t going to do you much good.”

Nope, it definitely wouldn’t, even if we could’ve gotten a police cruiser out here to the middle of nowhere in less than an hour. I didn’t think the cops would be equipped to handle an alpha werewolf in a frenzy. There were supernatural units, of course. A surprising number of werewolves worked in emergency services—or maybe not so surprising, since they could handle just about anything a criminal could throw at them, and humans liked having them as partners because officer casualties were so much lower in units with shifters attached. I could remember reading about that somewhere, although I couldn’t remember when or why.

But even a random highway patrol officer who happened to be a shifter probably wouldn’t be enough. Drew’s knuckles were white where he gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make it creak, and the tension radiating from his stiff body filled the air, nearly choking me.

“I don’t want to call anyone. I want to look for shamans on the internet. I mean, unless you have someone in mind?”

Drew shook his head. “Go for it. Don’t know how much luck you’ll have. If you don’t find someone, I’ll have to call around and try to get a word of mouth reference.”

And if he knew who to call, he already would have. Right.

I picked up his phone where he’d dropped it in the center console and started searching.

I tried Oregon first, since we’d chosen to head southwest into the corner of Oregon and then down into Nevada. I only found a couple, both way out of the way to the north. And besides, they both looked super shady. One had a photo on his website of himself standing next to a giant rock formation resembling an erect but crooked penis, and the other was wearing a cape.

Hard pass.

Of course, maybe all shamans looked shady.

Hmm. I might have to readjust my expectations.

I entered another search, this time for “shaman warlock for hire Nevada,” and then stared out the window as the very, very slow cell service chewed on my request. Not that there was anything to see. We’d left Boise in the midafternoon, passed briefly through some pretty scenery, and now had landed in the middle of an endless expanse of grassy plains. A few hills lurked in the background now and then. Also, if I’d been a power line and telephone pole aficionado, I had plenty of those to feast my eyes on.

Otherwise, zilch.

The browser finally stopped thinking and spat out a list of results.

I clicked through them extremely slowly, each site taking a minute or two to load. My teeth were grinding together after the first page of results. When I’d clicked on not one but two Elvis-impersonating magic practitioners, I gave the fuck up and tossed the phone back in the center console.

“No luck?” Drew asked. The strain in his voice worried me, though I appreciated the effort.

“Not yet. I’ll get back to it in a bit once we’re closer to a town or something. I think there aren’t many cell towers out here.”

Drew grunted his agreement, and thus ended our scintillating conversation.

Another fifty miles passed in silence; we were getting near the Nevada border, and the sun had almost gone down, highlighting the distant hills and leaving the plain drearier than ever. It mesmerized me, the endless green and gold and brown flowing past, featureless and empty.

Exhaustion caught up to me, and my eyes drifted shut. I tried to force them open again. I shouldn’t fall asleep. Anything could happen.

But I conked out anyway.

I woke with a start, disoriented and groggy despite the immediate burst of anxiety and dread. Night had fallen completely, although a weird glow shone in the rearview mirrors. Reno? Already? And already behind us, meaning we’d crossed into California. The clock on the dashboard read 12:22. Fuck. After midnight. I’d slept the whole evening away, and Drew…

I glanced over at him. There were strung-out junkies with better color in their faces, and his jaw had clamped so tight he wouldn’t have any molars left if he kept it up.

Blood or no blood, he’d need to knot me soon. I didn’t think he’d be able to last much longer without it. Or without something, anyway. And hand jobs and blowjobs hadn’t seemed to cut it before.

“We should stop the next time we see a motel or something,” I ventured. “There should be a zillion of them around here, since it looks like we’ve just left—”

“No.”

I blinked at him. “Yes.”

Drew shot me a glowing-eyed glare and then turned his attention pointedly back to the road. His hands clenched even tighter. That steering wheel might not make it, even if he did.

“If we stop, I’ll—we can’t stop.” Shit, the steering wheel really wouldn’t make it, because claws had sprouted from his fingertips, and he’d—yeah, he’d actually embedded them in the leather, maybe so he’d be less able to reach for me. Double shit. “I think you need to find someone to deal with me, Ash. Quickly. And stop arguing. It just makes me want to shut you up.”

Well, when he put it like that. My heart skittered and skipped a couple of beats and I scrabbled for the phone again, opening up the browser and then hesitating despite my rising panic.

I was pretty sure one of the Elvis warlocks had been near Reno, but not much else. There hadn’t been anything better in the first set of search results, and I didn’t have hours and hours to comb through the less and less relevant ones.

The sides of the car seemed to be closing in on me, claustrophobic and stifling. The air had to be saturated with alpha mating pheromones. And no doubt he could smell me, my fear. Trapped here, whizzing down the highway, hands shaking and body coated in nervous sweat, stiff legs, parched mouth, nowhere to go, no one to help us…

I leaned back in my seat, hyperventilating and dizzy.

There had to be a way.

When I entered “shaman warlock northern California” into the search bar, I didn’t have much hope left—but I knew it was the right thing to do.

One last try.

Most of the first page gave me results that were too far away, even shadier than the Elvis impersonators, or so hopelessly outdated that I didn’t think calling would be much use. They all gave me an uneasy feeling.

But the first entry on the second page looked more promising—given that my standards for “promising” had gone way down by now. The title, in a garish purple script, read “Hawthorne and Armitage Magical Services,” and they apparently had a warlock and a shaman working together to “provide any magic you can think of, and a lot you probably can’t.” They had a list, including Wards & Protection, Healing, Fairy Puke Cleaning Solutions (that one made me pause and shake my head, despite how freaked out I was), and Eliminating/Creating Zombies. Under the heading “Our Terms of Service have changed!” it read: “All fees collected up front. My freaky brother-in-law (the Armitage in the title) handles any undead, so don’t even ask for a collaboration. Don’t call before noon. Nevada residents must provide a background check.”

Well, we were coming from Idaho via Nevada, so surely that didn’t apply to us.

Most importantly, they listed their location as Laceyville, California—and when I looked at the map, I saw we could get there in an hour, give or take.

Fine. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

And okay, not before noon…but that surely applied to actual morning hours, right? And it was an emergency.

I tapped the phone number, my finger hesitating over the send button.

Another quick peek at Drew showed me a red-faced, damp-at-the-temples, fanged-out disaster. He’d been getting heavier and heavier on the gas pedal, taking the turns at speeds I didn’t think were legal. Or smart.

I sent a text instead, considering the wording carefully before I hit send. How did I even describe Drew’s problem? Simpler would be better, I figured.

I’m in a car with an alpha werewolf who’s been cursed. We’re on our way to you. We really, really need your help.

A long minute passed.

Finally, just as I thought I might scream or start crying in frustration and terror, a message popped up.

Is this a hostage situation? We charge more for those.

What an asshole.

But that aside…was it? At this point, I could go either way on that. I threw caution, and Drew’s bank account, to the winds. Hawthorne might be an asshole, but he might also be my only hope.

Borderline. He’s about to go completely feral. If you can knock him out as soon as we get there, that might be good.

The second I sent that, my blood ran cold. Shit, what had I done? What if they killed him?

Don’t hurt him!!! It’s not his fault. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. A warlock messed with him and made him this way.

And then I nearly bashed my head into the dashboard in frustration.

Not that I have any problem with warlocks! This was a horrible one!

An extended pause followed that.

Finally, I received a longer message with an attachment.

I’ve sent directions. We’ll catch you at the border of our territory. Try to get him to stop the car voluntarily. If it gets totaled we’ll charge more to fix it.

While I was processing that, he sent: Are you human?

Yes, I replied, choosing not to touch his continued emphasis on fees.

Understood. We may have to knock you unconscious too, but we’ll limit the gross bodily harm.

Well, that reassured me completely. I rolled my eyes at the phone and sent a quick thanks that I wasn’t sure I meant.

I set the phone in my lap and turned to Drew. “I found someone.” I tried to keep the quaver out of my voice, but it didn’t work. “He’s only an hour away. I’ll program it into the GPS, okay? And then you just need to follow the directions.”

Drew let out a low, rumbling growl.

And nothing else.

Okay then. Careful not to make any sudden moves, I put the location Hawthorne had sent me into the car’s navigation system and hoped for the best.

***

That hour felt like years. At first, I thought the faint vibration I’d started picking up was coming from the car.

Then I realized it was Drew, growling so low in his chest I almost couldn’t hear it.

It nagged at some part of my nervous system that had probably controlled prehistoric people’s responses to saber-toothed tigers, raising the hair on the back of my neck and elevating my blood pressure to stroke-level, and I dug my fingers into the edges of my seat, gritting my teeth and telling myself over and over again to hold on, that we’d be there soon.

We’d left the flatlands behind for heavily forested, gently rolling hills, and we wound through endless tree trunks and rocks and fallen logs and bracken, illuminated in flashes by our headlights.

At last, the nav system told us to take a left in one mile.

The turn into Hawthorne’s “territory,” whatever that meant.

Drew didn’t slow down at all.

“You need to make this turn, Drew,” I said, having to bet that my talking to him wouldn’t set him off. “Turn here, and they’ll help us.”

He hit the gas a little harder, his growl growing in pitch and volume, more of a snarl. Oh, God. We wouldn’t make it. He’d crash us into a tree, fuck me while I lay there bleeding. We’d both die.

He had to still be in there, the kind, rational Drew I knew, the one who woke up in a cold sweat after dreaming he’d hurt me.

The one who’d gently carried me out of my cell, taken me home, tended to me for weeks. Comforted me when I woke up screaming. Spent time and money and effort finding foods I could tolerate, reassured me that he’d stand by me no matter what. Lain in bed with me, holding me in his strong arms and quoting along with every line of The Fifth Element, and then kissing my neck when I laughed.

I turned in my seat and carefully, slowly, reached out and laid my hand on his bare forearm. His skin burned furnace-hot, at least a degree or two more than his already high normal.

His claws speared the rest of the way through the steering wheel, and he let out a reverberating growling howl, not loud but at a timbre that made my spine try to crawl out of my back and slither away.

“Drew,” I said softly, squeezing his arm. The muscles felt like iron beneath his skin, he’d gone so tense. “You need to help me. You need to protect me, remember? Keep me safe. Slow down, turn left, and then stop the car. Please?”

I didn’t think it’d work.

And then he let his foot off the gas and swung the steering wheel to the left.

We careened off the little two-lane rural highway and onto gravel-speckled dirt, apparently the road to Hawthorne’s place, and jerked to a stop a few yards down it as Drew slammed on the brakes.

For a second I thought we’d been set up, or possibly just scammed. We sat there in the middle of the road-driveway-thing, surrounded by trees, moonlight pouring down and joining the headlights in illuminating exactly freaking nothing at all.

And then someone tapped on Drew’s window. We both jumped and turned, Drew snarling and ripping his claws out of the steering wheel with a crunch that made me wince, me waving frantically at whoever was there, shouting, “Get back, he’ll—”

The words “kill you” died on my lips as the person on the other side of the window held up a hand, releasing a little flash of purplish light—and Drew slumped down in his seat like his strings had been cut.

“Drew?” I asked cautiously.

Nothing. His head lolled to the side, and he toppled down onto the center console like a felled tree, his head in my lap.

Slowly, terrified of what I might find, I ran my fingers through his hair and let them come to rest on the side of his neck.

His pulse beat too fast for someone unconscious—but he had a pulse.

I hadn’t realized how keyed up I’d been until some of my tension fled, and all of a sudden, I wanted nothing so much as to throw up everything I’d ever eaten and then sleep for a week. I leaned my head back, horribly dizzy. And also desperately needing to piss, now that I had the leisure to think about it.

Another bang on the window made me jump enough to bounce Drew’s head on my leg.

“Hey,” came through the glass, a little muffled. I peered out the window, getting an impression of a dark mess of hair and a pale, pretty face. Definitely a guy. Hawthorne? “I’m Nate,” he said. “Hawthorne. Want to get out for a sec so we can move him to the back and get the car up to the house?”

I was kind of surprised he hadn’t asked for a credit card first, but yeah, I’d come this far. It took a little effort to extract myself from Drew and get my seatbelt undone, but I half-crawled half-fell out of the passenger door a minute later, sucking in deep, cleansing breaths of air just as fresh as around Drew’s house out in the woods, only with a slightly different tang to it. Redwoods, I realized. California. My home state, maybe.

Nate came around the front to meet me, sticking out a hand for me to shake. He was about my height, only not quite as painfully thin, and had painted-on jeans and a hoodie so oversized it would’ve fit Drew.

“You never gave me your name,” he said as we let go.

“Ash, and that’s Drew in the car.” I froze as the likely source of the ridiculously large sweatshirt came around the front of the car too. Where the hell had a redheaded giant been lurking? I’d been distracted, but sheesh. A giant redheaded alpha, apparently, by the faint glow in his eyes. “Um. Is this the shaman?”

Nate burst into an inappropriately loud cackle. “Fuck no. That’s Ian, my mate. He’s the muscle. I didn’t feel like dealing with a passed-out feral alpha werewolf on my own, if you were out of commission. Also, he wouldn’t let me. Thought it might not be safe.” Nate rolled his eyes, as if this were a totally absurd stance to take. It seemed reasonable to me.

I shot Ian a nervous little smile. He didn’t appear to be about to eat me or anything. Not that I’d be the best judge.

And it hadn’t escaped me how fucking alone I was, out here in the middle of nowhere with this warlock who’d knocked Drew out with a flutter of his fingers and yet another big, scary alpha with no reason to be kind to me.

Who else might be lurking? The unknown shaman, at the very least.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, wondering if I should knock on some wood. “Thanks. For helping. I know it’s really late. But I was—I didn’t really have a choice.”

Ian grunted and turned away, apparently done with the pleasantries. Nate rolled his eyes again, sighed, and said, “We’ll get him in the back, and then you can give us a lift up to the house. We’ll sit down and figure it out there.”

“Give me one minute.” I was about to start dancing from foot to foot. “Long road trip, no stops. Those trees over there okay?”

Nate shrugged. “Ask them.”

He turned away to go and help his mate, and I went for the trees, shaking my head.

All warlocks and shamans are weird, I reminded myself. At least he’s not wearing gold lamé. Or experimenting on me.

We’d get to “the house,” and we’d figure it out.

I had to trust in that, and in this Nate person, and hope I hadn’t made a terrible mistake.